


A Falconress

by fleete



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Post 5X13, Season/Series 05 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleete/pseuds/fleete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunith goes in search of her son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Falconress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LoveChilde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveChilde/gifts).



> The title is from [My Mother Would Be a Falconress](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15709) by Robert Duncan.

The news comes with a passing merchant wagon. King Arthur is dead. Guinevere reigns as Queen.

The people of Ealdor remember both of them well, and they hold a vigil around a fire for the king. People tell stories of the time that Arthur came to Ealdor and defeated the evil Kanen. At several points, they pause and look at Hunith, waiting for her to add interesting details. She says nothing, though, just turns her cup round and round in her hands.

“I’m sure your boy is well, Hunith,” says the Eric the baker, dropping down next to her. “He’s probably serving the queen now.”

No. He almost certainly died at Arthur’s side. Or more likely, he died a little before Arthur, standing between him and his enemies. Hunith tries and fails not to imagine what it must have taken to get through Merlin.

“You could send a letter to Camelot,” Eric suggests. “Haven’t you got a relative up there?”

Gaius. She’d thought of that, but she’s still not sure whether she wants to know the answer. “Yes,” she says. “You’re right. I think I will.”

She smiles timorously at him, and Eric squeezes her shoulder.

In the morning, though, another trader stops for bread. There’s a rumor, he says, that a great sorcerer appeared at the final battle in Camlann and rained down lightning upon the enemy forces. He says the witch Morgana is dead and that the king’s body has not yet been returned to Camelot.

Hunith spends the rest of the day in a haze, fighting the aimless impulse to leave, to _do_ something. She has always struggled with motherhood, would cry into her fist at night when Merlin was little, confused and helpless. She didn’t know how to help him. Or how to raise him. Or how to keep him alive, even, and to this day, it hurts that the best she was able to do for him was to send him away.

Even if he is alive now, who is to say that she can do anything for him?

Ultimately, it’s the thought that he might be dead, lying somewhere without anyone to close his eyes or see to his body, that makes her decision for her. Hunith throws bread, vegetables, blankets into a basket. She ties a cloak around her shoulders and pulls on an extra pair of hose. Eric agrees to look over her cottage and chickens for her, and she sets on her way.

*

Queen Guinevere knows almost as little as Hunith does, but she and Gaius direct her towards Avalon. Gaius doesn’t seem to think she’ll be able to find him. Gwen wants to send knights with her, but Hunith refuses.

She goes in the direction of the lake of Avalon, stopping five different taverns in five different villages, staying in inns that are paid for by the Queen’s money. She goes to many hovels, caves, and cottages supposedly inhabited by sorcerers, but she doesn’t find him in any of the places people tell her to look for a sorcerer. Instead, she finds him when a little girl tells her that a mysterious physician had treated her mother’s broken leg that same morning. She goes down by the river that the girl told her about and follows it for half a day until she finds her son, curled up asleep against the roots of a great tree, his cheek resting against the bark.

His clothes look like they haven’t been washed in a good while, and his neck and hair are dirty. Her heart in her throat, Hunith lets herself stroke his head for a long minute, and takes in his face, the beginnings of frown lines around his mouth, the dark circles under his eyes, the wrinkles in his forehead. Eventually his eyes blink open.

“Mother?”

“Hello,” she says, withdrawing her hand.

“Am I—” He frowns and straightens up, looking around. “How did you get here?” He searches her face, scrutinizing her head to toe, apparently unconvinced that she is really before him.

“I came to find you, after we received word about the King.”

His face settles out of its confusion into tired grief. He reaches out to touch her knee, and she sits down next to him, pulling him into her arms.

“I couldn’t prevent it,” he whispers.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, but she can’t help but thrill in his heartbeat under her hand.

“I told him, though, before he died. About my magic.”

She presses her palm against the curve of his cheek. “Yes?”

“He forgave me, I think. In the end.” He shudders. “He…he thanked me.”

Hunith can’t help the smile that spreads her lips. Merlin sounds so _surprised_. “Of course he did.”

She pets his head, and draws his head down on her shoulder. He has to shift down against the tree, he’s so tall, but he gets himself settled, rubbing his forehead against her neck a little.

“Of course he did,” she says again. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mother, I’m not going back with you,” he warns her.

“I know.”

“I can see you back to the nearest town and buy you transport on a caravan.”

She strokes his hair, using her fingernails to loosen some of the dirt from it. “I’m not going back.”

“Mother—”

“Go back to sleep,” she says and brushes his hair back to kiss his brow. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

Merlin doesn’t say anything else, but she can tell that he’s going to fight her on the morrow. That’s all right. For the first time in a long time, she feels convinced that her son is better served by her presence than her absence. She knows about grief. _This_ , she can help him with.

Hunith shifts a little, tries her best to cradle a grown man as if he were a baby.

“Sleep,” she whispers and tips her head back to stare at the stars.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Falconress (the wind beneath your wings remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1451422) by [claudine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudine/pseuds/claudine)




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